Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Tick, Tick, Tick, Gong....

I just spent several days at my Father-In-Law's home. He is a man of many interests, but it seems his major passion is clocks and watches. He collects them and repairs them. Now, mind you "collects them" isn't quite a strong enough to describe what he has going on at his place. It is more akin to having a sample of every clock ever made and a few he has made himself.

The odd thing about being in a clock collector's home is the constant ticking. There were no fewer than ten clocks in his living room. Some wound and some not. Some were just mounted as objects of beauty. It was hard to figure which clocks were set to the correct time.

Fortunately there was only one clock that chimed on the hour and it made the sound of the Big Ben chime, but at least it was muted. Another clock that was working when I arrived stopped working and needed to be rewound. Oddly after being reactivated it started chiming and gonging, but with any regularity. It didn't just sound on the hour, but rather whenever it felt like it needed to be heard and whenever I wasn't expecting it.

There were other grand clocks in other parts of his house and fortunately the Coo Coo Clock in the bedroom I was staying in wasn't running during my visit.

I love cuckoo clocks - have two of them, and sometimes wind them. Really hard to syncronize them so they cuckoo at the same time.

When I was growing up, dad was in the Navy and we had ship's bells in the house. I loved their little bongs, and as long as I knew "about" what time of day it was, I could tell immediately what the exact time was when the bells went off.

At 1:37 this morning I got out of bed to remove the clock from the wall because it was ticking too loud for me to go back to sleep. Now what to do about those squeeking floors that woke me up in the first place. :(